I know it’s extreme but it’s the reality. For someone who is impacting by politics (say lost their jobs due to COVID), you can’t just stay on the sideline and ignore it.
You just have the great privilege of letting other people take care of that dirty work.
Is taking a news diet good? Absolutely. Lots of crap out there and a mental break is needed once in a while. But ignoring the suffering of people around you is just bad.
For the most part, it's non-actionable info. You bring up "relatives being deported or shot by the police", but the number of people on HN that describes is going to be tiny. The average HN user is less likely than most to have been burned by COVID due to the remote-friendliness of tech jobs.
For me, the calculus works out like this:
1. Is it possible for me to do anything substantial about it? (Throwing a few bucks at a charity or "raising awareness" about the large social problem everyone already knows about does not count as "substantial")
2. If it is possible, do I have the ability? (Financially, mentally, physically, temporally)
3. If the answer to both of these questions is "no", then it is non-actionable and not worth expending my own limited energy on.
The vast majority of things you hear from the news media fail both of these tests. They are intended to provoke you or scare you about something that is mostly out of your sphere of influence.
And who are the "people around you"? With the internet that could be half the damn world. It sure is a privilege for you not to have to worry about injustices in the Middle East.
I'm not saying people should be selfish, but I don't see how what you're suggesting is productive either. Even the most well meaning person on this planet cannot possibly have an impact on all these different issues. Pick some areas you know you can contribute to and focus on that.
The question is really how to optimize awareness & participation with personal wellbeing. There's a big difference between getting psychologically clobbered by the outrage engines of social media or TV news, and being able to take in and understand current events in a way that encourages contemplation of how to best participate.
One way is to focus our attention and efforts on the things we can control as OP mentions. Another is to shift sources from fast/reactive news to more infrequent and considered sources. Another still is to participate locally and learn things firsthand.
My grandparents paid attention to politics, as did many in the United States at the time. TV news was watched, no Internet, lot of newspaper reading.
They were sent to Tule Lake and interned for being Japanese-American all the same; their possessions stolen by a government who doesn't care if its citizens "care" about politics.
The average person has no control over "politics." Caring about it didn't save my grandparents, nor the protests of all of their friends.
No one took care of that dirty work. That's the great delusion.
Are you willing to die for what you believe in? And, before one answers this hastily, think about it.
I have come to realize most are quite selfish in various way, myself included.
Your sphere of concern and your sphere of influence are two different things at the end of the day. If you've decided some social problem is within your sphere of influence, then by all means, take whatever helpful action you can - just do not pretend that this encompasses all problems, or for that matter that the number of problems is not infinite.
Down that path lay depression and burnout.
And it doesn’t for 99.999% of the US. How much time and energy was lost on the first Trump impeachment and the year investigation leading up to it. Absolutely no relevance for the day to day life of US residents.
How much time was spent hearing about a phone call to Ukraine? Also not relevant to real life.
Even the events in Congress last week were bad, but literally had no impact on people’s lives outside of the politicians/cops/etc in the building.
Your point is well taken. Certainly there are issues and problems that gravely trouble people of integrity and good conscience.
However, while sometimes there are things we can do within our own lives to address those issues and problems, often there isn't any way to have a measurable impact.
That's not to say we should just give up. On the contrary, I think it's important to try to improve the lives of those around us within the scope of our focus, abilities and resources.
When I was a young man (in my twenties), I would often wonder if the work I was doing (tech) was really making the world a better place in a serious way. That really bothered me for a while.
But I came to realize that while we can't all have a measurable, global positive impact on the world, we most certainly can have a local positive impact on the people and world around us.
Do I create better working conditions for people in Bangladesh? No. Can I genetically engineer a more effective SARS-CoV2 vaccine? No.
But I can treat those around me with respect, act with integrity and support my community. I can do constructive work within my chosen profession. And I can speak out when I see injustice, intolerance and hate.
Will that end the pandemic or halt the war in Syria or end world hunger and poverty? No.
But if I can do my part to lift up those near me, act with honesty and integrity and create constructive solutions for the projects I contribute to, I can be satisfied that I'm having a positive impact on the world around me.
None of that requires that I be willing to die for that, but that doesn't mean I'm not having a measurable, positive impact on the world.
I do not consume the news or social media and don't find this to be true. Politics do impact me.
I was arrested when I was 21, prior to joining the military, for an offense that was quite trivial. I was man-handled, hauled off to jail, and forced to wait until a friend read that I was arrested in the town paper (yes, that was pretty humiliating too) and bailed me out.
I'm a veteran, one that's been to Afghanistan with mild to average combat experience. When I got out in 2012 I watched my friends struggle, I struggled, and there were few options to get support and help. The help that was available often came with a catch 22. There was a time I spoke about these experiences more candidly under my real name and I was attacked by other veterans and even non-veterans for doing so. The statistics are grim from my point of view and that's not just speaking about suicide statistics. Things have, in some ways, gotten better. I've used my success to help fund some of my friends starting foundations that focus on jobs and mental health but progress is slow.
A number of my childhood friends were killed during the opioid epidemic, some while I was mid-service and was unable to go home to bury them.
The list goes on. When I read things like:
> You just have the great privilege of letting other people take care of that dirty work.
It always comes across as a dismissal, that I must be just living in denial or that I've somehow reached some stage in life where these things don't affect me anymore. Feel free to read through my post history, they do. When I talk to my friends that are still patching their lives together post-service I am reminded that my own journey continues on-wards and often with them. They are the only people I can readily depend on to know experiences I know the way I know them.
The problem with politics is that change is slow. Getting a whole country the size of the United States to realize why and how your group is important and worth paying attention to takes time, energy, and resources which do not appear over night. People will doubt you, even question you, and it takes a piece of you with it every time they do. These are exacerbated if you appear mad, vindictive, or frustrated in the process and it's hard not to.
News on the other hand moves at the speed of lightning. Attitudes and windows of understanding rapidly close and open and it can be difficult to watch in real time. I've told people before that history is macro-understanding, news is micro-understanding, and social media is nano-understanding. History I can do, the rest; well, it's a bit overwhelming and it has everything to do with my attachment to these subjects and the discourse in between that inevitably belittles me as a human with real experiences.
If I were to go around, attaching my real name or face to my opinions as some form of "participation" in society, I would be quite fucked. I don't call that a privilege by any means.
So, really, what you're asking is whether people are willing to, once they start acting in a way which risks their life, continue acting in that same way. And it turns out that the vast majority of people killed by this reasoning are killed by genocide or as collateral damage of war; they're swept away by hate and violence which they did not invite.
The question really should be, then, rather one is willing to risk their life for the specific action of interrupting those who are trying to kill others in this way. And such interruptions often turn out to not be very risky, unless the interruption is happening very late in the process, at the moment of violence. It was not risky to yell at street fascists in 2017, before they were creating so many street fights, because they were not yet strong enough to simply fight, but instead had to justify their hate before a largely non-violent crowd. Now in 2021, though, yelling at street fascists is dangerous, but referring them to the FBI is relatively safe. What was acceptable praxis has changed.
From this POV, we must recontextualize your original message. Who is pushing and shoving? Fascists. Who are they pushing and shoving? Undesired minorities. By what means are you allowed to be selfish? Well, you might not be in an affected class! This is a failure of solidarity. You must be willing to defend the rights of others, if you expect them to defend your rights as well.
I don't pretend there aren't infinite problems, or ones difficult to access, but I strongly caution against treating political problems as something that are immovable.
One may also act on those views believing they are helping society, while consensus in society views those actions as detrimental. A recent example of this is the rioters and insurrectionists at the Capitol believed they were doing something to help society, whereas society judged their actions otherwise.
A possible solution to this conundrum is to focus one's participation on areas that are broadly agreed upon to be beneficial to society, so as to avoid accidentally becoming part of the problem, or simply minimize blowback from a disapproving environment.
This is a solution that is intentionally sidestepping any particular ethical framework, which may guide one's actions toward different tradeoffs.
Another thing worth considering is not all participation in society need be political at all, nor attached to your real name, nor known to your employer. Those are conditions you've attached to your response that were not part of mine.
Perhaps there is a moral obligation for people with privilege to engage; but it's clearly not a practical necessity for change to happen. Given the lack of progress in Black civil rights ever since the 60's; as this discourse around "we all must participate!" has strengthened, it is far from clear that it is helpful.
I propose that the other way is best. Live your life, respond with genuine outrage when injustice crosses your path, and don't feel like media consumption fixes anything.
As someone who spent time in both volunteer groups and activist groups, I can assure you that well intentioned people can easily make things worse, not better. It's why I got out of such groups.
The first method you cite: "Changing the way people think about something" is a common example of this. It's very easy (in fact, I would say it is the norm) that people's beliefs are strengthened the more they feel besieged, and that often happens by others trying to make them think about something differently (or about something they don't want to). Easily 80-90% of such interactions have this outcome, and definitely over 50% even here on HN. I noticed this earlier in life, and it was confirmed when I started studying communications and influence (almost all books will mirror what I have said).
That's not to say you can't change people's minds. You do need to have the skills to do so, and the ability not to make things worse in trying to do so.
It's great if you want to change things, and I don't aim to discourage you. It is, however, your responsibility to be able to gauge how effective you are, and know whether you are causing damage or not. Do it poorly, and you will merely make it harder for those who do have the skills.
Giving money is the safest way to help without doing harm - provided you have the ability to identify which organization to give the money to.
In that sense, I have no problem with folks who tune out. They could make things much worse by trying to help.
I fully agree media consumption doesn't fix a whole lot, and certainly not in today's media environment, I merely advocate for staying informed and engaged enough to discover a useful way to make impact. I want to live in a world where we mostly just live our lives as we please, but society's state right now is such that I don't think it will let us off that easy.
That in itself is an irresponsible view. Nobody has the power to change society. The power we have is to make arguments and present ideas and then sometimes society changes of its own accord. Nobody is powerless to make persuasive and compelling arguments.
Allow me to introduce a few samples who disagree with your nuanced analysis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_tol...
Pragmatism cannot be escaped simply by complaining that I am pedantic. Saying something is an action. Practicing a ritual is an action. Dressing a certain way is an action. Eating certain foods is an action.
Recall that your original post insinuated that most people are too selfish to choose to die for their beliefs. I am trying to explain to you that people do not choose to die for their beliefs; rather, they choose to take certain actions, and then their killers choose to kill them because of those actions. It is the selfishness of those personal actions which we are considering.
And, once we have achieved this scale, we can clearly see that killing itself is an action. It is simply another tool for achieving our selfish ends. A person can choose to selfishly kill as many people as they can reach. This suggests that our morality needs to not just account for making the choice to "die for what you believe in", but also the choice to kill for what you believe in.
Finally, let us consider the context of your original comment. The comment recounted a tale of folks who were sent to concentration camps in the USA during WW2. They claimed that the average person has no control over federal politics; you agreed and asked people to consider how they would prefer selfishly to not stick their necks out for the sake of ending the concentration camps. However, there are two grand ironies there: first, that we today claim to have entered WW2 in order to destroy concentration camps; and second, that we today have concentration camps on our southern border.
I don't know exactly what your point is, since you're not using your words well, but I think that you should take a step back and try to figure out where you're headed. I have the luxury of an elected representative who already is trying to close down the concentration camps, so I know which side I'm on.
And yet, every post about H1B visa rule changes will have hundreds of comments bemoaning the selling out of the American IT worker. There will also be much hand-wringing about the on-shoring of foreign jobs and anecdotes about how terrible it is working with Indian consultancy firms.
HN commenters want to vent as much as anyone else. They just do it on political posts that they feel affect them personally, even if it's not something they can change directly.
>I know that you want to have an attitude where you are indignant that I am minimizing genocide and war
No.
I re-read your original message. Your examples in some can be prevented by interrupting specific actions, as you describe it. Indeed speech, clothing, ritual, and any other behavior can be interrupted. For the OP, how would s/he interrupt being Asian?
>people do not choose to die for their beliefs; rather, they choose to take certain actions, and then their killers choose to kill them because of those actions
What is the substantive difference? I am also uncertain on "kill them because of those actions", or more precisely I do not believe there is a way for making such nuanced distinction. Looking through the list of genocides, I am hard pressed to find a set of actions that could have been interrupted to prevent death. At State level, maybe.
> This suggests that our morality needs to not just account for making the choice to "die for what you believe in", but also the choice to kill for what you believe in.
I had no disagreement with this statement in your first post, which is why I did not comment to it.
>concentration camps on our southern border
I do not know what country you live in.
>I don't know exactly what your point is
My original post was in response to describing the current willingness to '"care" about politics' but not to "die for" or "kill for".
(As part of the "kill for", I am certain neither of us are advocating murderous rampage, but more like a para-/military action to liberate.)
Again, appreciate your responses.
Also, please stop using HN primarily for political battle. We ban accounts that do that (regardless of which politics they're battling for), because it destroys what HN is supposed to be for. I had to go quite a way back in your comment history to get to a place where you weren't doing that. Fortunately I eventually found it so I'm not going to ban you right now, but can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit?
I don't know what you mean when you say privilege. It is a very broad word. The powerful being privileged is something of a tautology, but the privileged are not necessarily powerful.
What I said before didn't imply people without power do not also have responsibilities, just that those with power have more, because of their position in society. Part (perhaps much) of that responsibility is to work towards a better society; I used 'fixing' as shorthand for this. In the US that is 'a more perfect union' but there are other concepts enshrined in other countries. I don't think this is a particularly controversial position to take.
Similarly the concept of 'with power comes responsibility' reappears throughout human history and I don't think is controversial.
Maybe we're in agreement on this, I can't tell from the way you're picking things apart. Anyway, I'm going to politely bow out.